


Colorless

by Vexie



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Widojest - Freeform, colorblind Caleb, or it would be widojest if Jester didn't ship Shadowgast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:53:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23869324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vexie/pseuds/Vexie
Summary: "Jester, I can’t see very many colors,” Caleb admits quietly. “I’m…colorblind.”Jester sits back in her chair. Color…blind? She tries to imagine a world without color. He had said he didn’t have a favorite color…no wonder! He doesn’t have any of them!Jester finds out Caleb is colorblind and doesn't handle it super well. A world without color isn't really a world Jester is okay with.
Relationships: Astrid/Bren Aldric Ermendrud, Jester Lavorre/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 10
Kudos: 155





	Colorless

“Caleb, I need your help,” Jester sing-songs at him as she pokes her head into his room. Caleb looks up from his book.

“Ja?” he asks. “What do you need?”

He’s genuinely curious; usually people need him to identify magic items or to perform spells. They have a few days of down time in Nicodranas…they’ve had nothing going on that would require his skill set. Unless this is about the trickster spells he owes her.

“I need you to come shopping with me for things for Traveler-con,” she says.

“Me? Surely Nott— _Veth_ or Caduceus would be better for that sort of thing,” Caleb says.

Jester walks all the way into the room, folding her arms.

“I think you’d do a great job helping me pick things out. Plus, you need to get out of this stuffy room and spend some time in the fresh air. All you’ve done is read your smelly old books for two days,” she says matter-of-factly.

Caleb raises his eyebrows at her and doesn’t respond. Jester sighs.

“Okay, and everyone else is busy,” she admits. Caleb smiles. There it is.

“All right. I will accompany you,” he says.

He doesn’t mind. Not really. He knows her group shopping excursions for what they are—she has things she needs to do and she doesn’t want to go alone. As fierce as she is, the one enemy Jester has yet to defeat is her fear of being alone. Caleb isn’t one to judge. 

“Thank you, Caleb!” Jester replies. “I promise we can stop at a bookstore on the way back and I’ll buy you a new book. But it can’t be old or boring.”

“Deal,” Caleb says warmly.

In no time at all, they’re out in the bright costal sun, walking the lively streets of Jester’s hometown. It feels delicious, Jester thinks. For once, she’s just a girl walking around, doing some shopping. She glances up at Caleb, walking beside her. People looking at them probably think they’re a couple. That’s a pretty silly thought. She imagines what they would look like if they leaned into that image. He would offer her elbow and she’d link her arm through it daintily. Her other arm would be holding her parasol because in this version of them, she’s wearing a beautiful lavender tea dress with a lacy lavender parasol to match. Caleb would probably be wearing a suit of some kind in that dark purple he started wearing in Xhorhas. His hair would be tied back with a purple ribbon—his hair looks so good long. They would go for a nice luncheon at one of the restaurants with a seaside view. What would they talk about? She tries to imagine Caleb talking about the light, fluffy things the characters in her romance novels do. It’s not like him at all.

Caleb looks down at her, then. Jester realizes she’s been looking up at him for—how long now? She smiles brightly to mask her alarm. _Dear Traveler, please let me not have said any of that out loud._

“So what are we looking for?” he asks. If he noticed her staring at him, he doesn’t comment on it.

“Oh, um, we need to find paper and some regular, non-magical paints so I can make programs, and some more fabric to make decorations,” Jester says.

“Lead the way,” Caleb says. “Though if you need a recommendation for paper, there is a shop two blocks over that I visited last time we shopped here.”

“Oh, no, there’s a sweet little stationary shop Mama likes. They have all sorts of cute colored paper. You can even get scents already in the paper if you want!” Jester replies. “Though I’m not sure if the Traveler would want scented programs.”

“If he did, what scent do you think he would choose?” Caleb asks. Jester tilts her head to think about that, her nose scrunching up in concentration. It makes him smile.

“Probably some kind of spice cake? Like, sweet but with a little bit of bite, y’know?” Jester says. 

Caleb nods.

“Oh, here it is!” Jester points at a sign bearing the name “Dots and Blots” in a frilly calligraphy.

Caleb follows Jester inside. Shelves with various colors of paper, ink, and envelopes line the walls. A counter in the back bears a sign stating that it is the perfuming station in the same frilly calligraphy.

“Isn’t this great?” Jester says, beaming up at him.

“I did not know there were so many different options for paper,” Caleb admits.

“Yeah! There are so many different colors and some of them have cute designs pressed into them. Do you want to get some cute paper for your spells? What color do you like?” Jester asks, pulling him toward the different paper selections.

“Ah, nein. Regular parchment is fine for me. I go through it so quick, it would be wasteful to spend any extra money on special paper,” Caleb says, shaking his head.

“Paper is supposed to be used,” Jester says, rolling her eyes. “If you see anything you like, let me know and I can get you some. Maybe you can just get some special paper for sharing spells. Like if you wanted to write a spell down and give it to Essek. Wouldn’t you want to give Essek a spell on special paper?”

Caleb makes a face at Jester, whose grin is wide and full of mischief.

“I think Essek is a practical man like myself, and will be just fine with plain parchment,” he says.

“Caleb. Did you _see_ his house? And his outfit? Essek likes fancy paper,” Jester says, crossing her arms.

“Aren’t we here for Traveler-con programs?” Caleb says, scanning the shelves pointedly.

“Yeaaaaah. Well, at least now you know where to find them if you change your mind,” Jester says.

For a moment, the two browse in silence.

“Hmmm. Which color should I get, Caleb?” Jester asks thoughtfully.

Caleb hesitates.

“Oh, I don’t know. What color do you think he would like? You know him best, after all,” he says carefully.

“Well, his like, main color is green, but I don’t want to do too much green, y’know? We need to mix it up a little bit, make it exciting. Make it pop!” Jester says, rifling through several stacks of paper.

“Maybe you should get more than one? Have a whole different selection of colors for people to choose from,” Caleb suggests.

“That’s a really good idea!” Jester exclaims, her face lighting up. She moves around Caleb, gathering papers and holding them together experimentally. To him, there seems to be no rhyme or reason. She’ll hold some up together, shake her head, then put one or the other away, then pick up another and nod.

“Can you hand me the pink with the light pink flowers?” Jester says, holding out her hand while she considers the fan of papers in her other hand.

Caleb frowns at the stacks on the shelf. Pink. He scans the shelves and finds what is likely the right color. With flowers. Okay. None of them have anything on them. Logically, where would the flower print be based on the organizational structure. He squints and picks up a piece of paper and hands it to Jester.

“No, the _flowers_ , not the hearts,” Jester says.

“Oh, I misheard,” Caleb says. _Dammt_ , they probably have some cutesy name or labeling system. “Where do you see the flowers? I’m not seeing them.”

Jester frowns at him.

“Right here, silly,” she says. “Here, I’ll get it.” She reaches out and pulls a paper from a stack right in front of Caleb’s face. He sighs. Of course.

“See? These flowers are super cute and go with the bees, clouds, and vines. I’m going for a bright spring day theme,” Jester says, holding up her fan of paper.

Caleb nods appreciatively. The clouds are all right, but the bees and vines are harder to make out. None of the flowers appear for him. He takes a deep breath as Jester turns to the shelves, trying to ignore that voice in the back of his head that whispers “Wrong…you got it wrong.”

“ _I don’t know what we’re going to do about this. There’s only so far one can go with your limitations. It’s such a shame too. Your grasp of theory and basic casting is unparalleled. But as things grow more complex, you will be severely handicapped if you can’t_ see _what you’re doing. Mistaking a ruby for an emerald was harmless today, but such mistakes can throw off the delicate nature of more advanced spells in very detrimental ways. We’ll have to think about this little…problem, won’t we?”_

 _Word spreads like wildfire. Bren Ermendrud has finally hit his ceiling. The students who have been competing with him for top spots in all his classes snicker at him in the halls. They finally have the upper hand because of Ermendrud’s_ handicap _. Bren holds his head high. His throat contracts and his eyes burn but he keeps his face passive until he’s back in his room. Eodwulf and Astrid find him there a little while later, eyes and face red and splotchy._

_“It was bound to come out sooner or later, Bren,” Eodwulf says, though not without sympathy. He’d known, of course. They’d been close since they were toddlers. Eodwulf had been the first to point out to Bren’s own mother that he didn’t know his colors right and had trouble spotting things in the forest._

_“They keep saying that’s it for me. That I won’t be able to handle the advanced spells. But I can’t be finished here. Not yet. I can do so much more,” Bren says angrily. “I’ll figure something out. I have to.”_

_“We’ll help,” Astrid says. “Whatever you need, we’ll do it.”_

_Eodwulf flops onto his own bed._

_“Won’t we, Wulf?” Astrid asks pointedly._

_“Of course,” Eodwulf says, rolling onto his stomach and folding his hands under his chin. “If he wants us to. Knowing Bren, he’s probably got it half figured out already. We won’t need to do anything at all.”_

_Bren thinks for a moment._

_“Actually, there is something you can do,” he says. “Remember when you helped me figure out which berries were the ones we could eat and which ones we couldn’t by finding other things besides color to use as identification? Let’s start there.”_

_Eodwulf grins._

_“Yeah…and no one will get the shits if you guess wrong this time.”_

_They start right away, studying gems and spell components. They write down every difference between each one that has nothing to do with color, quizzing Bren until he can select the correct item quickly every time, even if the cut of the gem is similar._

_He may have gotten it wrong once, but he wasn’t about to let anyone catch him getting it wrong again._

“Caleb?” Jester is saying. “I think I have everything I need. Are you sure you don’t want any fancy paper?”

“Ja, I’m sure,” Caleb says, blinking.

“O-kaaay,” Jester sing-songs. She picks up a piece of paper. “I’m pretty sure Essek would love this purple one with the stars.”

“No, Jester,” Caleb says, voice a little sharper than he means it to be. Jester looks at him for a moment, hurt, confusion, then concern fluttering across her face like a flock of birds. She puts the paper away. _Wrong again_.

“Let’s pay for these and then get some lunch,” she says, walking toward the front counter. “I think we both need something to eat before going to the fabric shop.”

“Okay,” Caleb agrees, more out of guilt than hunger.

Jester pays for her paper and art supplies, then leads Caleb to a sandwich shop where they can sit on the roof under big umbrellas and enjoy the nice day. Just like in her daydream, they have a perfect view of the ocean. For a moment, Jester takes in the warm, salty air and the endless ocean view. She’s missed home. She turns to Caleb, who is staring contemplatively out at the sea.

“Hey, I’m sorry if I teased you too much about Essek,” she says gently. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Caleb looks at her for a moment, then sighs.

“Nein, it was not that,” he says. “You may not have noticed, but I prefer very plain things.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Jester says. She frowns. “So you were upset about the paper? It was too fancy or something?”

“Sort of,” Caleb says. “The reason I like plain things is because they’re easier for me.”

“Easier?” Jester tilts her head. “Like, because it costs more? But Caleb, we totally have a ton of money now. We can get whatever things you like, probably.”

“No…Do you remember how I handed you the wrong pink paper in the shop?” Caleb asks.

Jester nods.

“I did not mishear you. I couldn’t see flowers or hearts. Or pink. Both of those papers looked the same to me. Jester, I can’t see very many colors,” Caleb admits quietly. “I’m…colorblind.”

Jester sits back in her chair. Color…blind? She tries to imagine a world without color. A world where she can’t see all of the paints in her paint box? And her mama’s dresses in her big walk-in closet? And the flowers on Yasha’s wall? And all of the colors of the sky and the ocean and the big, flowery plants around Nicodranas? He had said he didn’t have a favorite color…no wonder! He doesn’t have any of them!

“Jester…” Caleb says, reaching out to touch her cheek, eyes and voice full of alarm. Jester realizes her eyes are full of tears.

“I’m sorry I just…that’s awful, Caleb,” Jester says. “How…how many colors can you see?”

Caleb considers for a moment, taking his hand back.

“Mostly, I see a lot of amber-tones. Browns and yellows and oranges, a little bit,” he says, then gives her a smile. “And blue. I see blue very well.”

“You can see me!” Jester says without really meaning to. She doesn’t know why she’s so relieved. She hadn’t even realized she was afraid of him being unable to see her until just then. But Caleb’s smile deepens, the warmth actually reaching his eyes.

“Ja, I can see you, Blueberry,” he says.

“But how do you…live?” Jester asks. “I can’t imagine not being able to see colors. It would be so boring all the time.”

Caleb shrugs.

“It’s how it’s always been. I didn’t know I wasn’t seeing correctly until I was maybe six or so. I was always having trouble spotting things hidden in the woods. I thought I was just stupid, but it was my friend who figured out that I just couldn’t see most colors,” he says.

“You have to know colors, though? When you do disguises and when you do the dome, the colors are always just right,” Jester say, frowning.

“Ja, that is a good trick of mine,” Caleb says. He leans in, as if sharing a secret. “I taught myself to modify my spells to include a color correction component. It’s a small spell I can combine with any other spell I’m using to make sure the colors are correct. A…friend at school helped me with it. I struggled in my schoolwork, you see, after a certain point. My friend made it so I would be able to see correctly for a short amount of time, but I learned how to combine it into my other spells so I wouldn’t need to see to use them. It’s where I learned to start tweaking and modifying spells, actually.”

Caleb still remembers Astrid’s shy smile as she hands him the slip of paper with the spell she’d devised on it.

_“I want you to see me, Bren. It doesn’t last for long, but I want you to see all of me,” she says. “I know it’s stupid, but I wrote you this spell. I think it works. Please try it?”_

_Bren looks over her work, written out in her neat, round handwriting. The equations look good, the logic sound. It’s so simple…why hadn’t he thought of it? But then, Astrid grew up in the house of a physician. She knows far more about medicine and how the body works than he does. Most of her studies are in magical effects on the body. That’s why she’ll be a great healer one day._

_“I’ll try it as soon as I get—”_

_“A glass prism,” Astrid finishes for him, pressing one into his hands._

_Bren takes a breath and casts the spell. He blinks several times, looking around the room. Everything looks so different—so vibrant. Knowing things are different and_ seeing _them are two very different things. He looks at Astrid._

_“Your eyes are…green,” he says. “And your dress is so red!”_

_Her green eyes fill with tears as she embraces him._

_Later, they discover just how useful her small spell is to him, but for the hour that the spell lasts, they do nothing but explore._

Caleb looks at Jester, who still looks troubled.

“Do you still use that spell? The one so you can see things?” she asks.

“Sometimes,” Caleb says. “If I need to see.”

“Do you think you could make a spell that would let you see colors all the time?” Jester asks.

Caleb considers it. He really hadn’t thought about a permanent fix before. It’s so easy to slip that small spell into his other spells that he hasn’t ever really thought of his sight as a problem that needs to be solved. Well, not until he went shopping with Jester, anyway. At this point, adding color correction to his magic is second nature. Maybe a year ago he would have dismissed the notion of a permanent change to his sight, but now that he’s found a way to permanently change Nott, anything is possible.

“Maybe,” he says. “It’s not that important so I haven’t given it any thought. I get by just fine without it and I have other things I want to learn.”

“It _is_ important, though!” Jester’s voice is loud and hard enough that a few other patrons of the restaurant look over. Caleb gives them a nod before turning back to Jester. Her arms are crossed, her eyes on her plate.

“Why is this so important to you?” Caleb asks gently.

Jester takes a deep, shaky breath. How does she explain how her paints were all she had growing up? How she had nothing but her imagination, sheets of paper, and a box of paints? How she used to sit in her mother’s closet and look at all of the beautiful dresses and help her pick out her jewelry and makeup? How strange and varied the world is? How much she loves seeing every sunrise and sunset since they’ve been traveling? How beautiful and different every landscape has been? How awful life would be if all of those colors and visions were muted? It would be far darker and lonelier without them. It’s not fair that he can’t see what she sees.

“When I was little, the things that made me happy were my bedroom window, a box of paints, and a stack of paper. I would make up all sorts of things and paint all of them out. I used to build castles or caves or magical fairy forests and paint them so they looked just right. It made me happy. I’m trying to imagine a world where I didn’t have those colors to imagine or paint with and it makes me so sad. And it makes me sad that this whole time you couldn’t see all of the cool things on our journeys and you didn’t even get to see what color my dress was at the party. Maybe if you could see colors all the time, you’d be happier too,” Jester says. It sounds childish even as she says it, but it’s hard to explain. Her whole life is based in _color_.

“Jester, I’m okay,” Caleb says, giving her his small smile. “I didn’t have those things when I was a boy, but do you know what I did have? I had books and stories. Have I told you about my mother?”

Jester looks up, shaking her head. Caleb’s small smile remains, though his eyes grow sad.

“My mother was our village’s seamstress. Many of my memories of her are of her sitting in her chair by the fire, her fingers moving quickly, her needle flashing as she sewed. While she sewed, she used to tell me stories to keep me occupied during the winter when I couldn’t go out to play. She told me old fairytales and folk stories. I couldn’t get enough of them. Sometimes my friend would be there, too. We would sit and listen for hours, then go up to my room or out into the woods and pretend we were part of those stories. When we were older, I learned to read first. I used to read as many adventure stories as I could out loud, and then we would act them out. And do you know what? I never needed colors for that,” Caleb says. “It never once stopped any of our grand fairytale adventures. And it’s never stopped me in any of our real adventures.”

Jester smiles a little at that.

“Your mother sounds lovely,” she says. “You don’t talk about her much.”

“She was…a wonderful woman. I miss her often,” Caleb says quietly. He takes a breath. “But the point is, it never stopped me from being happy before. I see what I need to see. And if I need to see more, I can take a peek with my spell. Which I do, sometimes.”

Jester nods. She’s quiet for a while.

"Do the others know?" she asks. Caleb shakes his head. 

"Nein," he says. 

"Not even Nott?" Jester says. 

"I never had any reason to tell her. It affects so little of what we do, I never thought to say anything. I think you're the first person I've talked to about it since school," Caleb says. 

Jester looks down again. Great. She's the first person he's talked to about this and she totally makes it weird. He'll never talk to her again, probably. 

“I’m sorry I freaked out,” she says.

“I understand that it’s an important part of your life,” Caleb says. “But it’s not a big deal to me. It’s just how things are.”

“Okay,” Jester says, still sounding unsure.

“Just don’t ask me to help you pick out stationary again,” Caleb says.

Jester laughs at that.

The rest of their shopping trip is pleasant and uneventful. Jester procures several yards of fabric for more capes, and some other colors to potentially use for draping over things or table cloths. She refrains from asking Caleb to help her pick out colors, though she pointedly asks him to help her figure out what the best texture would be.

In turn, Caleb has Jester help him find a good romance for them to share when they get to the bookshop. They end up leaving with a few different options.

By the time they return home, everything is back to normal. Colorblind or no, Caleb is still just Caleb. Just as he said, it doesn’t stop him from happily showing off their literary finds to Beau, then diving into one. It doesn’t stop him from complimenting Veth’s hair, or admiring the “horse” Luc made out of some sticks and string. Jester watches as he plays “knights” with Luc before dinner. Maybe a happy life can be found without color after all.

As Jester crawls into bed that night, she lays her head down onto something hard. She reaches into her pillow case and pulls out a leather-bound book of fairytales. She opens the cover curiously. A note falls out and into her sheets. She retrieves it and unfolds the plain parchment. In Caleb’s small, spiky script is written

_I found a book of Zemnian fairy and folk tales translated to Common for you, so you can see what I saw when I was young and needed an adventure. These are what made me happy…I hope they make you happy, too._

_Your dress was pink, with little blue and white flowers. You chose a very charming lavender makeup for your eyes that night. Some things are worth seeing in their entirety, after all._

Jester smiles and places the note in her nightstand, then turns to the first story, imagining a tiny red-haired boy acting it out with his friends in the woods as she reads.

**Author's Note:**

> I -finally- got around to writing this fic! I've had the headcanon that Caleb is colorblind ever since he said he doesn't have a favorite color in...whatever...episode...that was? Gosh, I don't even remember what the context of the conversation was when he said that now. ANYWAY I wrote a post about it on Tumblr and I've been wanting to play with a fic about it ever since. I grew up spending a lot of time at my grandparents' house and my grandfather who I'm extremely fond of is colorblind, so this is definitely near to my heart. 
> 
> In case you're wondering, I wrote Caleb with Deuteranopia, which I think matches the amber color he uses for his magic the best. Originally, he was going to admit that blue is his favorite color because it's the only one he really sees well and things were going to get shippy from there, but for some reason that's not where this fic wanted to go. 
> 
> Also, him using Astrid's color correction spell in conjunction with his other spells gives him a brief flash of color vision when he casts. 
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, and let me know what you think! I might keep this headcanon around in future Caleb fics. I like to keep some continuity between most of my fics.


End file.
